SueTube redux: Italian broadcaster targets YouTube

Italian broadcaster Mediaset SpA has announced that it's suing Google for …

YouTube is once again being targeted for widespread copyright infringement, except this time the lawsuit is originating from Europe. Italian broadcaster Mediaset SpA announced today that it was going after Google for at least €500 million in damages, which translates to just over $750 million at today's exchange rates. Combine this with the $1 billion sought by Viacom, and YouTube is looking at the possibility of some serious legal liability.

Mediaset said that it found some 4,600 of its own videos and clips on the popular video sharing site, which the company equates to 315,672 (viewer) days of broadcasting, or more than 325 solid hours of transmission. The €500 million is just the beginning, too—Mediaset said that further damages could be tacked on if the company determines that it lost advertising revenue thanks to the videos being put on YouTube.

On cue, YouTube reiterated that it's not all about copyright infringement and that it respected the rights of content owners. "YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously," Google said in an e-mailed statement to Dow Jones and a number of other media outlets. "There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs."

Mediaset's lawsuit comes just over a year after Viacom sued YouTube for "brazen" copyright infringement, demanding $1 billion in damages. According to the complaint, Viacom identified 150,000 of its clips on the service that had been viewed an "astounding" 1.5 billion times. The company accused YouTube and Google of profiting from the posting of copyrighted works and even deliberately withholding filtering technology that could prevent such infringement.

The Viacom suit laid largely dormant up until earlier this month, when a judge ruled that Google would have to turn over 12TB of YouTube data to Viacom as part of the discovery process for the lawsuit. As a result, Viacom will soon find out exactly how many video clips have been removed from YouTube and access data about how many users watched which videos, although the two companies have agreed to let Google anonymize the user data before handing it over out of privacy concerns.

Google has long maintained that it is protected by the DMCA's Safe Harbor clause, which limits the liability of service providers when users post copyrighted content. What's unclear is whether YouTube counts as a service provider, or whether Congress only meant to protect ISPs. If YouTube is a service provider, many believe that a success for Viacom it could have widespread implications across how content is handled across the entire Internet. Both Google and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have made this argument, saying that if Safe Harbor is limited to ISPs, many Internet-based companies (including Ars Technica and any site that has a forum) could suffer or go out of business.

Of course, Mediaset's lawsuit was filed in Rome, where the DMCA doesn't reach. While it won't have implications for US Safe Harbor rules, it still carries with it implications for how strictly video upload sites operating in Europe need to police their users' submissions for infringing material.